Anton’s Faith pressed against Zoe. His Faith in her clashed with her Faith in herself, for neither had a true conception of her, such a thing was ineffable, but still, she knew his intention as he shifted in her Mirrored chains from being held to holding on.

“You don’t need to do this,” she shouted

“You’re encumbered,” he said with a smile. “Let me give you the boost, boss.” He planned on letting go.

She coudln’t let him, because if he let go… With a snarl yanked at her Skein and pushed herself even faster. Her chains slithered around Anton even as he released the ones in his hand. She gripped him tight to her. Bella and Skidmark shouted at her, but she couldn’t hear them. The blue ached against her as she climbed toward the center of liquid light. Her speed improved by a fraction, but the Witch only pulled ahead. In this race, she would lose.

What was the Witch’s wish?

She wanted a child, but Zoe had no idea what that even meant. A creature such as that… no human mind could hope to match those patterns of logic.

Maybe, maybe, it wouldn’t matter if the Witch won. After all, the world Zoe wanted back wasn’t so great. Her life wasn’t great. It wasn’t worth the pain she’d suffered… why then suffer the pain? Why strive?

This doubt trickled through the cracks in her mind, but she didn’t stop flying, didn’t stop pushing herself against the azure gravity kneading her blood and muscles and bones like a giant making bread.

She couldn’t stop now. She couldn’t let Anton go. She couldn’t lose.

The Witch’s lead gained. The serpentine grace of her flight — so unlike the stiff broomstick riding silhouette Zoe subconsciously expected — grew obscured by the light of the labyrinth’s core.

Zoe was losing.

Bella’s hand brushed against Zoe’s cheek. Her fingers gripped her chin and turned her head to meet her gaze.

“It has to be this way,” Bella said.

“I refuse to accept that.”

“We spoke in the labyrinth before we caught up with you. We’re ready for this.”

“You couldn’t have known this would —”

“We believe in you, Zoe,” Bella said.

Skidmark was crying, but she nodded in affirmation.

“We love you,” she said.

“No!” Zoe shouted.

Not like this. It was too soon. The blue beat against her eyes. She couldn’t see her friends. Couldn’t hear their words against the screaming air in her ears. Not like this. Reading their lips, her Insight turning movement into voices, the depth, the emotion, the reality all slipping away as her friends pulled at the silver chains constricting them. Please.

Not like this.

Moth drummed her fingers across Zoe’s heart. Wingtips brushed an empty hole, passing through, and entering, and Zoe stifled a sob as she pushed herself against the pressure. She couldn’t stop, even as this was happening, she couldn’t let go. Moth whispered. Mirrored skin slithering over her own. The press and touch, the sense of a smile, even now, a silver sliver in the blue.

But Zoe stared in horror as her chains unraveled of their own accord. She fought, but Moth moved, and her friends accepted. They reached out, Bella, Anton, and SKidmark, one last time to clap Zoe on the back and wish her luck, and express their love, their support — the beginnings of conversations that would never be — and for a split second, a stumble between heartbeats, Zoe made a choice.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She stopped fighting Moth and released her friends.

They were whipped away instantaneously by the speed. Specks plummeting down toward the ground. Zoe didn’t look, didn’t want to see them shrink as they descended to their fateful impacts. Bella could teleport with the sword. Skidmark could travel with lightning. Anton was Anton.

She had Faith they would survive, and if they believed in her, then she would honor that belief.

A wave of power slammed into her. Light flashed from her eyes and mouth as she pierced the blue like a rising mountain. She approached the Witch and squashed an urge to swing in for one last attack. It might steal more power from the Witch, but if she were hit in return she would lose power. She wouldn’t waste her friend’s sacrifice like that.

All these thoughts in the few seconds she flashed past the Witch. The goddess tilted her head back and screamed from the dark under her hat. All the rage and desperation echoed in Zoe’s black heart as her Faith carried her beyond the despairing monstrosity and into the dense blue core of the labyrinth’s heart. Blue light surrounded her as something caught her movement and slowed her. She coudln’t see through the dense color as she floated there.

A gentle peace rolled through her — she won — it was over — but she resisted the urge to embrace that feeling. Her friends, her planet, were gone. She needed to save them, or this was all for nothing. It wasn’t over till she received her prize.

“Well?” she called out after finding her voice. “I want my wish!”

No response came to her from the blue. She waited a few moments, impossible to tell how long in that changeless space. Maybe she already had the prize… should she just… wish?

No harm in trying…

“I wish the apocalypse never happened.”

The blue exploded like water on a grease fire. Skyfire swept over Zoe. Moth resisted, but the heat blackened and liquified her Mirror. Moth dripped screaming into the eternity of fire. The flames licked Zoe’s skin. She flew away, but it was all fire, suckling at her toes, kissing her eyes, she smelled herself cooking. No Might could resist this. No Willpower could push it back. Her blood started boiling, and her Vitality healed the damage quick enough that it could happen again, and she screamed as her veins ruptured again and again, but it was a losing battle.

She was dying, stabbed repeatedly by time’s slow knife, but too slowly. Her eyes popped one by one and her tongue charred in her mouth but still she screamed. Flames slithered through drooping earholes and touched her brain. Her senses, her pain, it all flickered to a stop like city blocks in a power outage. Darkness greeted her.

Night, after the eternal noon of the labyrinth’s heart. No pain. No senses. Her thoughts drifted.

There was nothing around her. No space. She quickly lost track of time, or perhaps it took forever, but she couldn’t know. Anxieties, worries, concerns for her friends, for one last trick of Fate — though burning alive certainly felt like the last trick — but where could she be now?

Her Skein burned away. The threads were swallowed by the flames that consumed her flesh.

“Do you know where you are?” Fate asked her.

Zoe turned around to see the throne draped in shadows. Fate sat under the twisting strand, his robes dangling, his head drooping, skeletal, the grin sharp as a scythe.

“I’m inside my mind,” Zoe said. “The flames burned away my body and these are the lost moments before my brain burns as well.”

Fate nodded.

“Power lets you outlive everything,” he said. “Even pain.”

“Are you here to mock me one last time.”

His eyes glinted as he rested his chin in his hand.

“Why would this be the last time?”

“My wish… I’m done…”

“That sounded like a question.”

Zoe steeled herself, though there was nothing left to steel.

“I’m done. Grant my wish.”

“And what would that look like, I wonder? If the apocalypse never happened? Would it start again, or would the crimson armada skip you entirely, perhaps another apocalypse? How would your world fare if it slipped into the Black Star’s embrace? Hmmm?”

“That’s not what I wished.”

“No… Don’t you want to know why I’m granting you a wish?”

His voice came from all around her. She turned, but there was nowhere to turn.

“I made it to the center of the labyrinth. Stop with these games.”

“Games are all I have. I made you, and I made the labyrinth, so why would I reward you for making it to the center?”

Zoe felt her frustration return. The loss of her friends, the pain, it was all worth it if she got what she wanted, but if this continued…

“You want to die. You want an heir. I just want things to go back…”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

“I know time can burn!”

“And what grows back in its place? The pattern keeps moving forward, no matter how much you singe the edges. You say I want to die, and yes, I do, but are you really ready to take on my burden?”

“What are you talking about now?”

“The wish comes true, in fact, your wish will come true any moment now, but I’ve delayed things.”

“Why?”

“Because the wish, like everything, has a string attached.”

A familiar pit of anxiety swallowed the darkness. She hadn’t thought it, hadn’t wanted to tempt, well… but she knew it was too good to be true. If she had eyes, she would have wept.

“What string? What price? Tell me!”

“Why don’t we discuss this somewhere more comfortable?”

A snap of fingers in the darkness, and Zoe blinked against sudden light. Artificial. Vinyl squeaked beside her. An air-conditioned breeze blew against her face with a feeble sterility that barely masked the smell of cramped humanity. Zoe looked around in rapturous disbelief.

She sat on a plane.